ult.

* * * * *

The above necessarily brief and imperfect digest gives only the
headings of an article which filled nearly two columns of the
_Times_, and it is needless to say that such an article in the
leading columns of the most serious and respectable newspaper in the
world produced an intense impression wherever it was read.

Of course the telegram was instantly copied by the evening papers,
which ran out special editions for the sole purpose of reproducing
it, with their own comments upon it, which, after all, were not much
more original than the telegram. Meanwhile the _Berliner Tageblatt_,
the _Newe Freie Presse_, the _Koelnische Zeitung_, and the _Journal
des Debats_ had received later and somewhat similar telegrams, and
had given their respective views of the catastrophe to the world.

By noon all the capitals of Europe were in a fever of expectation and
apprehension. The cables had carried the news to America and India;
and when the evening of the same day brought the telegraphic account
of the extraordinary occurrence at Tiumen in the grey dusk of the
early morning, proving almost conclusively that the rescue had been
effected by the same agency that had destroyed Kronstadt, and that,
worse than all, the air-vessel was at the command of Natas, the
unknown Chief of the mysterious Terrorists, excitement rose almost to
frenzy, and everywhere the wildest rumours were accepted as truth.

In a word, the "psychological moment" had come all over Europe, the
moment in which all men were thinking of the same thing, discussing
the same event, and dreading the same results. To have found a
parallel state of affairs, it would have been necessary to go back
more than a hundred years, to the hour when the head of Louis XVI.
fell into the basket of the guillotine, and the monarchies of Europe
sprang to arms to avenge his death.

Meanwhile other and not less momentous events had, unknown to the
newspapers or the public, been taking place in three very different
parts of the world.

On the evening of Saturday, the 6th, Lord Alanmere had called upon
Mr. Balfour in Downing Street, and laid the duplicates of the secret
treaty between France and Russia, and copies of all the memoranda
appertaining to it, before him, and had convinced him of their
authenticity. At the same time he showed him plans of the
war-balloons, of which a fleet of fifty would within a few days be at
the command of the Tsar.